Twitch Upon a Star

by Herbie J. Pilato

  Elizabeth intercepted those questions and said, “I think she’s got something in her eye.”

  “And Aggie was fuming,” Lizzie mused. “She almost popped her eyes, because she couldn’t say, ‘How dare you?’”

  The situation became progressively worse from there, especially with Moorehead backed up against that television. Finally realizing that Agnes was sincerely upset, Lupino was more desperate than ever to address her concerns.

  “Is there anything we can do?!”

  And Lizzie was “just sitting there on the sofa, trying to stifle a laugh.”

  At which point, Aggie turned around to leave the set and, as Lizzie said, “She looked like an owl … her head almost went in a 180 degree turn. And she looked at me and I just looked at her, and she stomped off, away to her dressing room and slammed the door. And boy those violets (Moore-head’s favorite flower, based on her favorite color) in that dressing room just went boooogooogooosh.”

  Another jolting conversation took place between Elizabeth and Moore-head on the Bewitched set during the potent Sylmar earthquake of 1971. “There were still aftershocks,” Lizzie recalled. “So we were all still kind of nervous, and I asked her if she was scared.”

  “No, of course not!”

  “You weren’t the tiniest bit scared?!”

  “No! Why should I be scared? God takes care of me! God protects me through anything!”

  “Well, that’s good. So, what was the first thing you did when you felt the quake?”

  “I grabbed my Picasso plate and put it underneath the piano.”

  “I see … God would take care of you, but you wouldn’t trust God with your Picasso plate, eh?”

  “Oh, Elizabeth! Really!!”

  At which point, according to what Lizzie recalled in 1989, Moorehead “flounced off into her dressing room!”

  Elizabeth also remembered how Agnes would sometimes employ a slight affectation in her voice when reciting certain words. “It’s like when she hit us that day with ‘Meami’ instead of saying ‘Miami.’ I said, ‘You just came back from Meami?’ And I thought, If anybody says anything, I’m gonna kill ‘em. Because I didn’t think I could handle that. I just went, ‘Oh, give me a break!’” While filming the episode, “Double, Double, Toil and Trouble,” on September 28, 1967, something or someone was going to break for sure. In this segment:

  Samantha, now Queen of the Witches, has to hold court at her house. When Darrin arrives home and sees the unusual proceedings, he orders every witch and warlock, including Endora, to vacate the premises. Infuriated, Endora enlists Serena’s help to rid Samantha of Darrin forever. So, while Sam attends a church fundraiser, Endora and Serena impersonate Sam [making] every attempt to drive Darrin away. Later, when their plan fails, Endora and Serena, along with Samantha and Darrin, [each] receive a pie in the face, during a free-for-all that takes place after Sam brings home a few baked goods from the church fundraiser.

  The pie-throwing scenes were ignited when Darrin mistakenly threw a pie at Samantha who he thought was Serena, and the mayhem just expanded from there. And when this episode is viewed closely, Lizzie, who received a pie in the face twice, first as Samantha and then as Serena, is seen laughing so hard, her lines had to be dubbed twice. She and York clearly enjoyed filming this episode, but as Lizzie recalled in 1989, Moorhead was none too pleased about receiving a pie in the face:

  It was instant fury and amusement at the same time. It was totally beneath her dignity when it happened to her. She wasn’t the least bit happy. She was seething, and not a happy camper … And yet it happened to everybody else and because she was an actress that’s the only thing that saved it. But there was no reason she should have been happy all the time. We would accommodate her in the schedule when she really had something to do like her one-woman show. Even though she confessed to me once that when she first read for [Bewitched], she thought well, It’s a job. I’ll take it. It’s going to be a failure anyway. And then of course she was kind of hoping that it wouldn’t have been a success, and then [when it was] she said she only wanted to do seven episodes … Then after doing [those seven and more], she said, What do you mean, only seven episodes? I always knew that once she was hooked on it, she wasn’t going to go away too much.

  But that’s exactly what Moorehead eventually would do with her cross-country one-woman stage show tour, and it ultimately annoyed Elizabeth.

  We’d do the schedule around her and everything. And she was cranky. I used to think, I can’t believe this. Why are we accommodating this woman?! If I’d try to do this, everybody would say, ‘What?! Get your ass on the set, and stop behaving like an ass!’ Right? And of course I wouldn’t have done it anyway, but that used to bother me (that Moorehead did it). And then she would get really nasty about stuff sometimes. And Bill would say, Oh, come on, now, Liz … she’s lonely. And I’d be like, Dammit—it’s her own fault! She’s lonely and feeling put upon. Because I always tried to really make her feel terrific. I mean, I’d argue with her and stuff like that. I mean, why not? … Because that was fun.

  Clearly, there were highs and lows, bonds and gaps between Lizzie and Aggie. But more than anything, as Charles Tranberg confirms, the two women had a solid professional relationship. Lizzie, in particular, “did little things” for Moorhead, sent cards, flowers, etc. “But off the set, except for an occasional party, such as one of Aggie’s lavish Birthday-Christmas parties, they really didn’t hang out together. If anybody was the daughter Agnes never had it was probably Debbie Reynolds.”

  As Tranberg sees it, Lizzie’s association with Moorehead could have been more competitive on Aggie’s part:

  But Elizabeth took great effort to make sure that Aggie felt comfortable as a member of the Bewitched family. She would send her cards for holidays and birthdays and flowers and funny little notes, just to let Aggie know that she was thinking of her. Aggie, I think, came to like Elizabeth very much so. At first she might have been a little dismissive of Elizabeth’s talents. She once, reportedly, told Elizabeth that she basically plays herself, while when Aggie was Elizabeth’s age she was always characterizing.

  I think Elizabeth took that kind of comment with a grain of salt and as time went on Agnes came to revise her opinion of Elizabeth’s talent. She would have been greatly impressed, had she lived long enough, to see the many diverse and different types of roles that Elizabeth took on after Bewitched—and how well she did in them.

  Tranberg says Moorehead always perceived Lizzie as a refined woman with good manners and a funny bone:

  Aggie loved a good sense of humor and Elizabeth could have a wicked one—as could Aggie. Neither, I believe, suffered fools gladly. They were both professionals who came to the set on time and knew their lines; Aggie certainly appreciated this about Elizabeth. Certainly as people that they had a respect and certain affection towards one another. As artists, I’m sure that Elizabeth was proud to be on a series that included an actress of Aggie’s stature. Aggie could be a bit jealous, however, that she was not the star of the show. It’s somewhat revealing that in her correspondence to her secretary, Aggie repeatedly refers to Bewitched as my show. It’s kind of funny.

  Lizzie and Aggie were at the very least strong-willed, if not competitive. The competition, Tranberg says,

  … would be mostly on Aggie’s side. Elizabeth was proud to be associated on the series with her. In fact, she was the one who suggested Agnes for the role of Endora and actually approached her about doing it. Agnes, at least from her private letters, seemed to feel that at times her contribution to the show was less appreciated than say, [that of] Elizabeth and Dick York.

  In 1968, both women were Emmy-nominated in the lead actress category, possibly leaving room for Moorehead’s vindication because, as Tranberg goes on to explain,

  … she felt it was her rightful place to be; even though Elizabeth, quite frankly, was certainly the lead actress and appeared in every episode. Whereas Agnes, who was brilliant as Endora, didn’t appear in ev
ery episode [only two-thirds] and in some of those in which she did, she might just ‘pop’ in and then ‘pop’ out again. My guess is that when Agnes was, afterward, nominated in the supporting category again, it was a disappointment to her.”

  Another interesting cross-tone between Lizzie and Aggie was Robert Montgomery, an actor for whom both women had a great deal of respect. In the 1940s, when Moorehead was new to Hollywood, a columnist, “perhaps it was Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons,” Tranberg suggests, asked her to name a few actors she admired and the elder Montgomery, a Republican, was on her list.

  Politically, Agnes grew more conservative as the years went by. Early on she had greatly admired Eleanor Roosevelt and even had provided the voice of ER on radio with The March of Time, but by the 70s Agnes was openly supporting Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. She had previously thought that actors shouldn’t be publicly involved in politics, but she truly felt that America was on a moral decline and felt that people like Nixon and Reagan would implement policies that would turn this around.

  In that way, she was probably closer to Robert Montgomery than to Elizabeth—who was a lifelong liberal. I doubt very much that Elizabeth and Agnes ever discussed politics. I can’t really document it but I have a feeling somewhere along the line Agnes might have told Elizabeth, “You did a good job in that scene. Your father would be so proud!” But then again, if she felt that there was a hint of Elizabeth and Robert Montgomery having problems in their personal relationship—she might not say anything to Elizabeth about him.

  Tranberg concludes that both actresses were bright, funny, strong-willed, and talented women who came to like each other a great deal and enjoyed working together. “Agnes probably thought that Elizabeth got a few more perks and consideration due to the fact that her husband, Bill Asher, was the director and later producer of the show. She alluded to it a couple of times in letters to her secretary regarding this.” But in general, he concludes, Lizzie and Aggie complemented each other well. “You could see really in their performances that they could be mother and daughter. They brought a lot of affection and love to their scenes together.”

  Meanwhile, the following twitch-bit of information proves intriguing:

  According to entertainment historian Rob Ray, the name Endora, bestowed upon Moorehead’s Bewitched character, refers to the Biblical Witch of Endor. Ray says this sorceress, sometimes called The Medium of Endor, was “a woman who apparently conjured up the spirit of recently deceased prophet Samuel, at the command of King Saul of the Kingdom of Israel, in the First Book of Samuel (28:3–25),” although the witch is absent from the version of that event recounted in the deuterocanonical Book of Sirach (47:19–20). If anything, that seemingly fits Moorehead’s religious personal profile (which also includes her coaching actor Jeffrey Hunter for his role as Jesus in the 1961 movie, King of Kings).

  Ray further explains how William Shakespeare is nicely added into the witch’s brew here, specifically Act IV, Scene 1 of Macbeth: “There’s that infamously popular moment in Macbeth when those three witches cast a spell to bring a double amount of ‘toil and trouble’ to the king”—a moment that concurs with Lizzie and Bewitched in more ways than one, mostly because she caused her father a periodic measure of heartache, and vice versa.

  Thirteen

  … Toil and Trouble

  “Do I look like Mary Poppins to you?”

  —Serena, in the Bewitched episode, “Serena’s Youth Pill,” February 5, 1972

  Lizzie loved to watch science fiction/fantasy programs like the original Star Trek (NBC, 1966–1969) and the gothic daytime soap Dark Shadows (ABC, 1966–1971), the latter of which featured another blonde sorceress (Angelique, played by Lara Parker). After Bewitched, she delighted in shows like The Incredible Hulk (CBS, 1978–1982), which co-starred Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno in a double lead role.

  To tone her own theatrical twin muscles on Bewitched, she’d don a black wig and some funky 1960s wardrobe to play Serena, Samantha’s look-alike and somewhat wilder cousin.

  The idea for Serena was generated early on in the series. In 1989, Lizzie explained the Samantha-Serena transformation process:

  Melody McCord was my understudy. We would go into my dressing room and go over dialogue, so she could get the timing right, so there wouldn’t be any gaps. She was exactly my height and looked very much like me. That’s why we could do the wonderful crossover (scenes on camera). We were lucky that she worked out that way. There are times when you have an understudy that doesn’t look anything like you at all, except for light coloring. She and I are built alike, same coloring. Then they would have to tie-off all the cameras and wait until we changed clothes and makeup. For her, makeup was no problem unless we were using 3/4 of her face, and not just changing her wig. With me, it would be a complete makeup change. It was always easier to go from Sam to Serena than Serena to Sam. Serena wore a lot more makeup … that crazy person.

  Whenever Serena showed up, Lizzie was billed in the credits as Pandora Spocks, a subtle nod to the famous Greek myth of Pandora’s Box.

  Pandora’s Box was an artifact, taken from the myth of Pandora’s creation as it is explained around line 60 of Hesiod: Works and Days. The “box” in question was actually a large jar given to Pandora (translated as “all-gifted”) which contained all the evils of the world. When Pandora opened the jar, the contents were released, except for the virtue of hope.

  Today, opening Pandora’s Box means to create evil that cannot be undone. In Serena’s world on Bewitched, it meant Lizzie’s interpretation of Samantha’s free-spirited cousin would be significantly hipper than her performance as the more conservative Sam. Lizzie played Serena to the hilt, further amusing herself with the Serena/Spocks billing.

  “I just thought I was so clever when I came up with the name,” Lizzie said in 1989, even though a Bewitched co-worker had another suggestion when doing the show.

  “Why don’t you just call her Pandora Box?”

  “Um, I don’t think so,” she replied. “My choice is a little subtler and funnier.”

  She was also clear on another matter: Her real-life cousin Amanda did not serve as the prototype for Samantha’s cousin Serena. She explained in 1989:

  We had always been very close as kids. But she was not the inspiration for Serena. And instead of making Serena out to be Samantha’s long lost sister, I thought to make her Samantha’s cousin.

  However, another Bewitched character, Uncle Arthur, played by Paul Lynde, had at least been named after Lizzie’s real-life relative. “I always adored my Uncle Arthur,” she acknowledged in 1989, while she also thought highly of Lynde. “I got along very well with Paul,” she said … almost to a fault.

  One morning on the set of Bewitched, the two shared a laugh so hard, director Bill Asher screamed, “I give up!” called for lunch at 10:30 AM, and walked off the set. That’s when Lynde pointed to her and said, “It’s all her fault.”

  “We were a mess, just an absolute wreck,” Lizzie mused in 1989, recalling the incident during which they behaved like childhood playmates reprimanded by a grade-school teacher.

  One of her favorite Bewitched episodes was the first season episode “Driving Is the Only Way to Fly,” which featured Lynde in his first guest-star appearance on the show, not as Uncle Arthur, but as Harold Harold, a very nervous mortal driving instructor for Samantha. Lizzie recalled:

  “Driving Is the Only Way to Fly” was one of my favorites! I mean, I totally truly enjoyed that. When you’re working with somebody who’s totally off the wall like [Lynde was], it gives you a lot of [creative] freedom. And Bill having known Paul for a long time, trusted him a lot and vice versa. So stuff that we would do also bled over into [Paul’s performance] … His instincts were fascinating. I wish he would have known. I wish he [had] understood how important he was despite all of his problems [alcoholism, manic depression]. I tried to help him…. It was wonderful because when you work with somebody really like that you find yourself kind of using a
nother part of your imagination that you don’t use with people that you [usually work] with. It was on a different level [with Lynde].

  No doubt Lizzie laughed a lot with Lynde whenever he played opposite her as Samantha, be it as Uncle Arthur or Harold Harold. But he hardly cracked a smile whenever she portrayed niece Serena to his Uncle Arthur. “Paul couldn’t stand Serena,” Elizabeth admitted. “His attitude was very different when I played her as opposed to when I played Samantha. But so was everybody else’s. I’d walk on the set as Serena and the crew acted entirely different toward me than when I was Sam.”

  Vi Alford, the wardrobe designer, not only functioned differently around Lizzie when she donned the Serena black wig and garb, she would periodically fail to recognize the actress. “There were times, when Vi would forget that I was playing Serena,” Lizzie recalled. “I’d be standing right next to her, and she wouldn’t even know I was there.”

  Former actor Peter Ackerman is a married Episcopalian priest with children who serves as Rector of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Springfield, Virginia. In the 1960s, he was the child of a TV star and a network executive who oversaw nearly every hit Columbia/Screen Gems series of the era, including Hazel, Dennis The Menace, I Dream of Jeannie, Father Knows Best, and Bewitched.

  Peter is the son of Bewitched executive producer Harry Ackerman, who also served as the head of Screen Gems (and before that CBS) and actress Elinor Donahue, best known for her roles on The Andy Griffith Show and Father Knows Best (the latter during which she met and married Harry). So, like Lizzie, he’s the offspring of noteworthy parents in the entertainment industry, parents who raised him with strong family values at the height of their Hollywood careers. Again, like Lizzie, Peter’s interest couldn’t help but be piqued by the industry that surrounded him. He recalls a rare show business party at the Ackerman home with all the trimmings—caterers, bartenders, servers, TV stars, athletes, and more: